2015 SHUTIN: Housebound is not home alone. The web is pages. Virtual worlds are people.. Summary

Housebound is not home alone.
The web is pages.  Virtual worlds are people.
Updated 8/3/2015

Voluntarily housebound?  Yes.  By choice.  Oh, I walk outside on occasion, when the weather is nice.  And I go out once in a while for medical attention.  And I chat from time to time with the people in old folks home where I live.  But those people are old.  Most of my friends are online in the virtual worlds where I also live.  The are younger.  

Dancing and carousing

• In a virtual world you don't need dancing lessons.  You just need an animation.

Background: I am 85 years old.  I live in a retirement facility.  They provide my meals so I don't have to do grocery shopping.  I can order anything else I need from Amazon, so I don't leave my computer when I go shopping.  I gave away my car several years ago because it was costing me more in time than it was worth to me.  I really needed it less than once a month, but I had to drive it once a week to be confident it would start.  Now, if I ever want to go anywhere, I can call a cab.  For what I was paying to support my car, I could pay a lot of cab fares.

I am telling about this because lots of people are housebound, not voluntarily.  They could be enjoying what I am enjoying.  

On a metaverse tour

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Most of my friends are online. I go into my virtual worlds several time a day to do things and talk to some of my friends.  I am often talking to someone about an article I am writing.  I am getting information, asking for some written copy to include in an article, getting pictures (you've seen them), or occasionally getting a video.  
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If you look through my blog, you will see some of what I am doing while "suffering the limitations of being housebound."   Sure, I don't go to movies.  (I do remember them. They used to be interesting.  But by now I have seen all the plots.)  I can get movies from Amazon any time I want, which isn't all that often.  But I can work with a whole group of actors, directors, writers, comedy writers, comedy acts, musical performers--in all,over 50 people doing some part of the entertainment business in virtual worlds.  

• The Drax Files: World Makers: MadameThespian Underhill

Here I am at Lauren's place

I sometimes do comedy there.  Here are a couple of my laugh lines

• I am so old that  my friends think I am already dead and just in denial about it.  
• Advantages of virtual worlds:  "No matter where you go, you always know where the bathroom is."  
• Selby Evans (Thinkerer Melville) at Lauren's place

Starting a metaverse tour

Click image to enlarge

• Metaverse tours
• I am the one in the blue jeans shorts and white t-shirt with printing on it.
• That printing is promotion for Lauren's place. 
• Right.  I don't look my age.  In a virtual world, I can choose.
• Who wants to look 85?

On a metaverse tour

• These tours are one way I find places to write about in this blog
• Phantasmagoria, by Spiral Silverstar: GIF art. Free galleries for other artists

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• Here is a case where I had a bunch of spiders for company
• (I made the video, too)
• Halloween feature: The Spiders of Jubjub
• Yes, in virtual worlds sometimes we are a bit weird.

Kitely community group meeting

• Kitely

Visiting Virtual New Orleans

Metaverse tours

• Had a wonderful time.  Wish you had been there.
• Metaverse Tours, a Google Community

Disabilities

• Public service instruction in virtual worlds: Unofficial 3D ADA Toolkit
• Disability sanctuary
• Disability blogs
• On the internet, nobody knows you're disabled.
• Up to 3.6 million elderly people in the U.S. are considered housebound and in need of home-based care.
•  Physical and Mental Health of the Homebound Elderly

Having a disability puts you in the world's largest minority group.  56.7 million people in the United States in 2010 had a disability. People with disabilities represented 19 percent of the civilian noninstitutionalized population.   Recent U.S. Disability Statistics from the Census Bureau

• 50 percent of adults in the US 65 and older had disabilities in 2010
• U.S. Disability Statistics and Information

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• Here is something New Media Arts offers to the housebound.  
• SHUTIN: A sobering experience, even for a teetotaler

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